Sport England Lottery Bid

You may be aware that some members of the committee have been working on a bid for lottery funding from Sport England to make improvements to our club. We embarked on this in early 2013 and prepared an outline bid, however an assessment was made prior to the December submission date that the bid was not likely to succeed for a number of reasons. This followed consultation with EBC Sport Development and England Squash & Racketball. We decided to go back to the drawing board and start again to hopefully ensure that we have a bid worthy of consideration by Sport England. The competition is very tough for funding and we must be 100% confident that we have this right before submission.

We are now working on a revised plan to complete a bid for the next submission in April dependent on being able to secure specific elements such as renewal of our Club Mark Silver ESR award and producing a Sports Strategy Plan, plus detailed improvement plans, which are all required. There are many other aspects of the plan which amounts to a huge amount of work, but we are determined to push ahead with this.

Our end goal will be to secure funding to enable us to improve our club to include the following;

Bringing courts back up to 100% condition

Improve other parts of the club with decor and flooring where needed

Upgrading of heating system

Improvements to ladies changing room

Refit of kitchen

Re-design on club frontage an entrance

Creation of a refurbished fitness suite available for using gym equipment, table tennis and fitness classes. This will include a larger area, better lighting and air conditioning.

In the shorter term we are also looking at what we need to do now to ensure the club carries on so some improvements will be made to priority items regardless of any successful bid or otherwise.

We will keep you fully updated with our progress, however we would like to invite any suggestions or comments from members now to ensure that everything has been considered when we submit the bid. Just email fairoaksquash@gmail.com or speak to any of the bid team, Paul B, Dave M, Natalie or Stewart C.